Alaska 11. Road Warriors July 20

I slept like the dead. 

And awoke like the resurrected.

It’s a NEW DAY.

We will put the past behind us. We will PLUG IN to the provided electrical. The refrigerator is ON.

And we will drive on. 

And drive we did.

After waiting for the batteries to get to 90%, we filled the water tank. I pulled out the dumbbells and cranked out an exhausting ten minute workout and we were off. The plan was to hammer it to at least Telkwa, BC. But we are Road Warriors and we went well beyond Telkwa to the turnoff onto the CASSIAR Highway. It’s official. We are now on the road to Alaska.

The drive to get there was mostly uneventful. We made several stops (Prince George for gas, sporting goods store, Burns Lake for gas, A&W…) Did you know every single little town in BC has an A&W? Unbeknownst to me, Dave had gotten, lodged into his brain, the idea of a kid’s size root beer float — no doubt some food memory from his past… So he pulled into the drive thru and ordered one. Reply: “Sir we do not have root beer floats.” Dave was rendered speechless. But only for a moment. He didn’t stop talking about the RIDICULOUSNESS of it for the next 20 minutes. “That’s how they got their start!” Then, five miles later, he’d break the silence with another outburst: “A&W doesn’t have ROOT BEER FLOATS? That’s insane.” A few miles more: “That’s all they had going for them. Everything else SUCKS.” He finally wore himself out and fell asleep. But I woke him up because he was still driving.

Maybe it was time for a driver change. 

I took the wheel, Dave blew up his neck pillow. I plugged in my headphones and the landscape finally started to change. We are finally out of the dry, slightly hilly, hazy low scrub forests and seeing big big mountains. It’s very green. And very pretty. I enjoyed driving immensely; freed from my bondage of doing passenger-seat research for illusive campgrounds, always at Dave’s beck and call…

We drove through the really cute medium size town of Smithers. I could live there. And they definitely will have access to fresh water long after the USA has run dry. (Note to self.). The SIZE and IMMENSITY of the rivers is simply insane. There is so much water! Dave is sorry he slept through it since I declared I will be moving there after the apocalypse. (Assuming I’m still alive.)

I got us to Kitwanga — the start of the Stewart-Cassiar highway, which I’ve been reading about for a year, since deciding to do this trip. It was, with the exception of the unexpected ice cream cone, very anti-climactic. 

It was also the scene of disagreement #2. Nothing to report, other than Dave waking up on the wrong side of the bed and Jennie not having it. A standard “spat” that lasted until we pulled into the Derrick Lake campground. Oh…well, it DID include a passive-aggressive swing through Gintanyow to see the “largest group of standing totem poles” that Dave mentioned in the midst of the spat — probably right after he told me not to “speed through town like a crazy person.”

Excuse me?

We had two options for campgrounds about an hour up the Cassiar Highway and took the road to the first, which was 3 miles of very rough gravel/grass, and ended at a little shallow lake with lily pads — hardly “cutthroat” habit as promised in the ALCAN Highway book — but quiet and empty, with the exception one tucked back site right as we drove in. We liked it. It felt like the first “real” campsite of the trip — and we are on day 11!! Bugs weren’t too bad — they were bad, but not as bad as I had imagined driving in. Dinner was a repeat of pork chops, cabbage and a sweet potato. Not nearly as good as the first time, not sure why. 

But the beer and the whiskey were divine. 

We took some casts, saw some rises. We think they were minnow-sized fish. 

Talk turned to bears at some point. For some reason, I’m not all that worried. That said, I also don’t have a ton of interest in SEEING bears. Everything I read is about people saying they can’t wait to see the grizzlies. I can wait. I don’t need to see the grizzlies. I am uber cautious about the food, garbage, etc. But I feel pretty secure in the camper. I am not sure quite what to do about a hot night though. Dave wants every door and vent open. I prefer to be safe and shut them. But I’m trying to not be psycho about it. So went to bed with everything open. 

At some point during the night — I think around 2 am — Dave nudged me whispering, “Jen. I hear footsteps. I think it’s a bear.”

I did what I thought was reasonable. In fact, I think I had rehearsed it in my head several times during the trip so far. I sat up, stuck my hand under the door screen, whipped the door shut, locked it, reached up to the stargazer window, unscrewed the hatch lift, slammed the window, secured it, clicked the magnetic screens back into place, laid down, put a pillow over my head and went back to sleep. 

And Dave hasn’t stopped laughing about it since. 

In fact I just read this to him and he’s laughing all over again. He can’t get over the  “instant reaction time.” The “efficient and seemingly practiced movements to  secure the pod.” He just can’t get over it. 

What I can’t get over is that HE woke up to alert me. That guy slept through the howls of our toddler kids. He would have slept through a tornado if I hadn’t woken him up. He slept through our smoke alarms going off in the middle of the night in Watertown (tiny bugs set them off). But somehow he woke up to “slow crunching footsteps”? How awesome is that?

The takeaway? We appear to make a good team.